‘You Will Meet a Great Woman’

Success, success, success

The sink, it stank. My landlady told me to take the plunger to it when it backed up — which was often. I am not a clean freak, but washing my dishes in that toxic sink demanded washing and disinfecting it first. Any amount of liquid down it caused it to back-up, so I plunged it — more back-up, more disinfecting — it was an endless filthy loop, and all I wanted was a washing up bucket.

I was living on 14 Irish punts a week, with an almost maxed-out credit card, in a house in the middle of a field in a bog on the tip of a peninsula at the end of Europe. I couldn’t afford to heat the house or insure my car. I couldn’t even afford a washing up bucket.

I had emigrated here, sight unseen, to run the house as a hostel. There had been no customers for the hostel yet, and just as well, as the ‘beds’ were only thin pallets on damp carpet, and it was winter.

I kid you not though: I was euphoric. I painted, I wrote, I explored. I cycled over the mountain to Dingle town, managed to charm the librarian, and I got six library tickets, — the maximum three, for me, plus three more — for Liba the cat! I grew alfalfa sprouts and ate cabbage and potatoes, like my Irish ancestors before me (till the blight hit and most of them starved to death.) I foraged fuchsia sticks and dug turf for the fire. I had no phone, and I checked the mail box up at the road at least ten times a day.

I scrimped, and I saved: all I wanted was a washing-up bucket.

It took the entire lonely winter to save three punts, but save three punts I did. The momentous day arrived. Washing up bucket, hallelujah! But what if I cycled the 14 miles, up and over the mountain to town, only to find that three punts was not enough?

Said bicycle had been thrown in to the moving van at the last minute — a fortuitous gift from my London neighbour Jackie — and being a one-geared fold-up bike, it had wheels the size of a dinner plate. I am long in the leg, but truly I did not care about the image I cut, peddling panically-manically on a midget bike: it was better than walking.

Cycling over the mountain, twice, was still a hard day’s slog, and it occurred to me that I might instead check out the supermarket in a village I’d heard about, which was only five miles along the coast road.

It was a gamble, and since this was long before the Internet Age, I hedged my bets, and threw my fortune with three coins to consult the fortune -telling book, the I Ching.

I Ching readings can be ambiguous, but this reading said unequivocally: ‘Success. Success. Success,’ and ‘You will meet a great woman’, twice. That was more than good enough for me, and off I set for the coastal village, Bally Ferriter.

During my voyage to Bally Ferriter, a woman in a red van passed me. Then I passed her as she’d stopped at the pub. Then she passed me again. I noticed her, yet again, parked at the school when I came out of the Bally Ferriter shop — disappointed, as far as washing up buckets were concerned, but directed on to another shop a mile down the road, I was still hopeful.

An Cat Dubhe, (The Black Cat) was an isolated dwelling set back from a crossroads, and I would have missed it but for the actual black cat stretched out on the forecourt. Signs and portents were looking good. I entered. It was dark inside, but there was a woman at the counter.

“Aha,” says I to myself, “is this the Great Woman?” To her, I said hello in my feeble Irish, then asked, “ Have you any washing up buckets?”

The woman replied, “I might. Wait now,” and she shuffled off into the murky depths of the shop. I caught a glimpse of a shiny stick lofted to a top shelf, and when she eventually reappeared, she had a washing up bucket in her hands.

“One left,” she says.

“Ah great!! How much?”

“Three punts,” says she.

Success, success, success!!!

Exalted, I set off home.

There was the woman in the red van, still at the school, now with a crowd of children getting in. There she goes again, passing me. Half an hour later, after I took a detour on a side road to see some beehive huts, the red van passed me yet again! When I followed it down the road and saw it parked at the pub, I decided to go in and get some water.

The pub (also a shop and a petrol station) was empty, but for one woman sitting at the bar. Yes, it was the woman of the red van. I sat beside her and she jumped right in: “Who are you, where are you from, why are you here, and what do you want?” I couldn’t help but smile.

I appreciated her directness, and answered in kind: “I am Lucinda Cook, I am from all over, I emigrated here ‘cos a house and job fell in my lap, I want to learn Irish, and I want to learn the uillean pipes.”

“Well, now” she says, “it just so happens that I am an uillean piper myself.”

“Not only that,” she says, “but I have a spare set of practice pipes up at the house, which I will lend you.”

“Not only that, but I will teach you how to play them.”

“And, I am warning you now,” she concluded, “they will break your heart, and I will be jealous of you.”

Wow!

That was Ethne. She is, she had, she did, they did and she was (just a bit.)

We are still the closest of friends, 32 years later, and there has never been a doubt in my mind that Ethne is the eponymous Great Woman. Without her, my life would be utterly lacking and unfulfilled.

Bless that stinky sink!